Burger Bar Boys: Police officer reveals harrowing encounter with drug gang that nearly saw him shot and killed at Northampton park

According to Google Trends, Northampton residents have been searching for information on a criminal gang called 'The Burger Bar Boys' - so who are they and what do we know?

As per The Metro, The Burger Bar Boys were the main street gang in Birmingham for more than two decades and contributed to the deaths of dozens of young victims.

The notorious gang trafficked semi-automatic firearms and propelled the city’s gun crime problem into national headlines.

A revealing account of the Burger Bar Boys can be found in Shaun Attwood's True Crime Podcast where former undercover police officer Neil Woods goes into depth about how he infiltrated the midlands gang and how he was nearly killed at The Racecourse in Northampton around the mid-2010s era.

'Why are they called Burger Bar Boys?'

"It was a burger bar where they used to meet in Birmingham. They had a rival gang, the Johnson Crew - famous rivals. That rivalry has led to a very high profile double murder of two women, Charmaine Harris and Letisha Shakespeare, who were machine-gunned in the street."

Ms Shakespeare, from Northampton, was 17 when she was killed in 2003. Ms Harris, from Birmingham, was 18.

'What was the reason they did that?'

"They thought they were someone else. They thought they were connected to the Johnson Crew and needed murdering."

The Burger Bar Boys had reportedly taken over the drug supply in Northampton, Neil says.

He told Shaun Attwood: "The way they had taken over Northampton is a classic story. Northampton Police had some success against their local dealers and the big gang from the big city stepped in and took over. The gap in the market place. It's just the way business works, isn't it?

"So they took over Northampton and that's when I got called in."

Neil Woods speaks about his undercover operation in Northampton.

"They persuaded me to do it (despite being apprehensive) because these are even more vicious than the last lot.

"They are using rape as punishment and reputation building. It was just unbound brutality.

"They weren't necessarily hands on. They were mostly wholesale [drug dealing] for the town. And there were six of them running the business, I had to work really hard to get an introduction to them directly. So what I did is, I picked on two people who were a couple - man and a woman.

"They were both problematic heroin users. She was really good at selling the big issues from 8am outside the Marks and Spencers in Northampton. And he was quite a good shoplifter."

Neil goes on, "I started to wear a camera to get evidence on them [Burger Bar Boys], I think it was for at least a week. One morning one of them said, 'why do we always end up meeting you here?' So I thought, there's a little bit of suspicion here, there's something going on.

"So the next morning I thought, 'do I wear the camera, do I not?', and I thought, 'no I'm not going to'."

Neil went and met five members of the Burger Bar Boys and got in a vehicle with them in Northampton.

He continued: "They drove me to the edge of The Racecourse. They took me to one of the dead end roads [near The Racecourse] and took me to the edge of the park, amongst the trees.

"One of them lifted his shirt up and showed me a gun tucked into his trackie top and he says,' right, strip, you're police, we know you are, where have you come from?'. And they made me strip naked in the day on the edge of The Racecourse, and I was very, very happy I had not worn that camera that day. Very happy indeed. I was almost smiling because it was terrifying but it could have been a lot worse."

'Do you think they would have shot you?'

"I think they would have definitely shot me. I think they would have not thought about the long-term circumstances. I think they would be quite sure they could have got away with it."

According to Neil, many of the Burger Bar Boys were raided and locked up but it was not long before another heroin supply was on the streets of Northampton... in fact, it was just two hours.

Neil said: "The [police] intel guy we called two weeks later, he says, 'Woody, we managed to interrupt the heroin and crack cocaine supply in Northampton for a full two hours'. Two hours. Two hours before there was another [drug dealer's] phone number on the street.

"You can imagine the Johnson Crew in Birmingham hearing the Burger's were raided in Northampton, they would have been thinking, 'yes, fantastic, put the call in, get an extra load of stuff in now, we're going to make a killing. We'll take over that market. Thank you the police'."

Neil has since retired and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following his 14 years as an undercover officer. He now advocates to end the 'War on Drugs'.

To watch the full interview, click here.